For the Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors
by Petronille
Summary: October, 1891. Sir Malcolm Murray engages the services of witch Lily Westenra to assist in the search for his daughter. But not everything is as it seems, as Lily begins to discover the motives behind the actions of those around her and puts together the link between a series of murders that has haunted her for years and the name of Moriarty.


**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Penny Dreadful **_**or anything contained therein or **_**Sherlock Holmes,**_ **but all original characters are mine. I picture Kacey Rohl (Abigail Hobbs from **_**Hannibal**_**) as our darling Lily Westenra.**

**For the Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors**

**Chapter One**

_September 22, 1891._

_Paris.  
From the diary of Lily Westenra._

Irene has announced her intention to return to London, for there is someone who wishes to seek out her services. "Someone?" I said. "Who's this _someone_?"

"It's someone very important, someone who had once sought out the services of Sherlock Holmes concerning a very delicate matter. Of course, now that Mr. Holmes is dead—" here Irene paused, perhaps taking a moment of solemnity for the man who she had once bested and whom we had considered a friend of sorts "—there is no one to pursue the inquiry. The client was referred to me by Mr. Holmes's brother himself. You _do_ remember Mycroft Holmes, don't you? He was the one who had us come to London to see about the Whitechapel murders…Oh, Lily! Don't you remember?"

There is no forgetting the sight of women hacked apart because some madman fancied it. And the expectant hiss of, "What do you see, Miss Westenra?" in my ear.

And then there were the letters, letters which the police had let me have overnight a few times. I still have the notations of the results of the spells I used in my grimoire from that autumn; one of them led us to a very petulant group of intellectuals and artists who had had too much alcohol one night and had thought it a great joke to write a letter to the police. Of course we kept it a secret; I could not imagine Oscar Wilde and Walter Sickert trying to keep straight faces while testifying before the police courts. Those never led us to our murderer.

Nothing ever led us to our murderer.

"It's something that's been etched into my memory," I admitted. "But this Sir Malcolm…who is he, exactly?"

Irene smiled gently, ruffling the carefully coiffed hair on my head. It had been her tender gesture since I had been a child, when she would visit my expatriate American parents while she had performed at the Palais Garnier. I patted my hair back into place and regarded her curiously.

"He's a grand explorer in Africa for Britain…and he's a big game hunter." Irene put her cheroot cigar in the gilt holder, lit it, and blew out the match. "His daughter is missing, and he went to Sherlock Holmes for help. But of course, Sherlock Holmes was already occupied."

_Moriarty._

"Sir Malcolm was very disappointed that Mr. Holmes met a watery grave at the hands of his enemy. We all were, naturally, but Sir Malcolm most of all."

I immediately held some contempt for Sir Malcolm. Priggish, self-important man! Sherlock Holmes had been one of the greatest detectives the world had ever known, and one of the greatest minds I myself have ever encountered. And Sir Malcolm was acting as though Mr. Holmes's death was an inconvenience and a wrench in his plan to find his missing daughter.

"Mycroft was kind enough to take on Sir Malcolm's case, and this was why we have been called upon…"

"Does he know?" I whispered.

Irene nonchalantly took another puff from her cheroot. "Know what, darling?"

"Know of me…of what I am?"

"Do you mean Mycroft Holmes or Malcolm Murray?"

"Both."

"Mycroft Holmes knows, but Sir Malcolm does not. And it's whispered that Sir Malcolm has the aid of a spiritualist, so think on _that_."

"So Sir Malcolm is open to…things unseen?"

"I would say a great many things. Oh, now, don't frown so, darling, you'll be fine! Mycroft Holmes has promised you will have the utmost privacy for the practice of your craft if and when need calls for it. His brother's flat is being kept as it is for now…and then there is the doctor…or, rather, _doctors_."

"Dr. Watson?"

"Who has always been most helpful to us." Irene rose from the chaise and went to her desk. "He has offered to look after you if something happens and I'm called away."

"Which it will."

"You're always the optimist, Lily," Irene said as she began to open the letters she had received with the morning post.

"It's not optimism, Irene," I said, getting up from my chair. "It always happens."

"If it _does_ happen," Irene said, "then you'll be with people who will look after you. Dr. Watson will no doubt act in your best interests when it comes down to it. So will you come with me, Lily?"

"Is it my services Sir Malcolm wants or yours?" I teased. Irene laughed.

"He specifically asked for you. I suppose my services are not needed," she replied. "Though he _did_ seek out Godfrey's as well to see if his son-in-law could be found."

"Well," I said, "it seems that Sir Malcolm wants everyone's services _but_ yours."

Irene placed the cheroot and holder into the ashtray as she opened another letter. "Which is just as well. It seems Godfrey is in Prague and has found something."

"Really?" I said. "Prague? What has he found?"

Irene frowned and folded up the letter. "I'm afraid I must remain discreet about that, Lily. It may be a distraction to you."

"Because Sir Malcolm wants results."

"He's paying a very handsome fee, Lily. He is sparing no expense."

"Irene, what hold does Sir Malcolm have over you?"

Irene glared at me, her hazel eyes darkening. "He has no hold over me. But he is a desperate man, Lily. So you must try…"

"Try?"

Irene picked up her cigar holder and gratefully took another drag from her cheroot. "Try to find her. Mina. We will look into Jonathan."

* * *

__

September, 30 1891.  
London.

I traveled to London as Irene arranged. It was Dr. Watson, genial and serious as always, who greeted me at the train station, for Mycroft Holmes was, apparently, too busy to burden himself with such a task.

"I am to take you to Baker Street, per Mr. Holmes's instructions," Dr. Watson said to me once we had gotten into the hansom cab. "Apparently there are notes there…Mycroft himself has gone through them and has left them at Baker Street, and he will procure any…ingredients you need."

"I don't think I'll nee any ingredients, Dr. Watson," I replied. Mugwort and lavender could be safely concealed in sachets in my luggage.

"Nonetheless, I assure they will be procured for you. Send a list of whatever you need to me, and I will forward it to Mycroft Holmes and it will be given to you with the utmost urgency," he assured me.

Dr. Watson remembered those days in 1888, when I, young and still dewy-eyed, had appeared at the workhouse that had held the bodies of Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols. After seeing what I had seen on those bodies, and invoking the ghosts of those women at night, I had lost my innocence and my eyes, Sherlock Holmes had remarked after the infamous Double Event, shone not with dew but glittered with the hardness of polished gems. "Jaded," he had said as I had lain trembling in Mrs. Hudson's spare room after seeing Kate Eddowes that night of the Double Event. Dr. Watson had given me a bromide to take with the brandy Sherlock Holmes had offered me. "There now—sleep, Miss Westenra. See what you might. We will be here for you throughout the night."

Some might say that Sherlock Holmes hated women, but no, he was kind to women, kind enough, I suppose. He was kind to me, after I had recited to him what I had dreamed the following afternoon. So really, he was kind to me after he had received the information he desired.

"Very well, Miss Westenra, you have confirmed what I theorized. My brother will hold much more stock in what you have to say, and I have dictated it and will send it to him. Watson comes with laudanum; sleep and forget what you saw."

"But…" I began. "Won't they want me to testify—the police, that is?"

"Would you want to end in Broadmoor, Miss Westenra, or in a rest home for wayward ladies?"

"No."

"Then take your laudanum, sleep, and forget what you saw."

But after the Kelly murder there was no forgetting what I saw.

And I promised all of those women I would find _him._

Holmes's notes were neat, even though he had been following the trail of one James Moriarty and went for days without food or sleep. The Murray case must have affected Holmes somehow, so Sir Malcolm's distress must have been palpable.

Mrs. Hudson has been kind to me, as always, and she fills me up with soups and stews. "You are altogether too thin," she declared to me when I first arrived at Baker Street and ushered me to Dr. Watson's old room. "I will take care of that. Mrs. Norton lets you starve…"

"Oh, no," I said. "When I'm sick…"

She sighed. "Mr. Holmes said you were a sickly girl. You were ill for two weeks after that horrible night in September of 1888…"

"Don't speak of it," I whispered. I had seen, over and over again.

_Do you think you can pierce through my mind? Silly, stupid girl, working for Dear Boss…silly, stupid girl, I will go inside, and then one day I will find you and cut you and rip you…_

"I thought he might marry you, you know," Mrs. Hudson blurted out. "Mr. Holmes needed a wife, someone good and sweet, who understood him…like you did. Not Irene Adler, but _you_."

"No, Mrs. Hudson, for he never asked," I said, going to her and stroking her gray hair. "Oh, don't cry—he wouldn't want it…"

He wouldn't want it. Sherlock Holmes could never abide any woman's tears but mine. 

* * *

_October 1, 1891._

There are letters. Mycroft has given them to me, in person.

Sherlock Holmes wrote them, all of them, to me.

He lives.

_He lives._

* * *

_October 1, 1891.  
__From Lily Westenra's Book of Shadows._

I have read Sherlock Holmes's notes regarding the interview with Malcom Murray. Mina Murray was last seen in Land's End, Cornwall.

And then someone took her away. Another man, it has been said.

The moon was new on October first.

I used my pendulum that night.

Mina Murray Harker lives.

_October 2, 1891.  
From the diary of Lily Westenra._

"She lives?" Mycroft Holmes asked as his manservant poured me some tea.

"She lives," I said.

"Yet Mr. and Mrs. Norton have no information regarding Jonathan Harker's whereabouts."

"What ought I to do?"

Mycroft gestured to the dish of cakes his manservant placed in the middle of the table, indicating that I should take on. I chose a blueberry scone, placing it carefully on my plate.

"You will dream," he said. "You _must_ dream." 

* * *

_October 2, 1891._

_From Lily Westenra's Book of Shadows._

I dream.

There is nothing.

There is a man.

He begs to be saved.

I don't know him.

My pendulum has told me nothing.

I will try again. 

* * *

_October 4, 1891._

_From the diary of Lily Westenra._

I met Sir Malcolm Murray today. He sat in Mrs. Hudson's parlor waiting for me. I have to say he is a very dashing man, very confident of himself and of the position he holds in England and the world. A man who knows what he wants, my father always says.

He rose when I entered the room. "Miss Westenra," he said. "So we finally meet. Both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes have spoken very highly of you and Mrs. Norton, your employer."

"I hope they didn't make unreasonable promises," I said, taking my place in the armchair and motioning for him to sit.

"Miss Westenra, I am a most desperate man who is running out of time. And such desperate times call for desperate measures. When I heard Irene Adler had a witch in her employ—and one who had an ancestress who learned under Marie Laveau at that—and that Sherlock Holmes thought much of your abilities, I decided to seek out your services." He gazed at me with expectant eyes as Mrs. Hudson brought some tea and poured it out for us. Once Mrs. Hudson had left, he continued. "Inspector Lestrade had much to say about how you aided with the case of the Whitechapel murders, and how he hoped you would be able to do more…"

"Those I helped to solve were the torsos found in the Thames, Whitehall, and Pinchin Street," I said. "Botched abortions, all of them. Nothing more and nothing less. The lady behind it and her son have been shut in madhouses. It was a tragic situation all around. The other murders are yet unsolved."

"A very good reason for you to come to London, then," he remarked gently. "And it's very kind of Sherlock Holmes's housekeeper to give you a room in her house and for Mycroft Holmes to give you access to his brother's rooms. What wonders they must behold for you!"

"They're not a wonder to me. He was very open about his notes and his methods when it came to the cases in which we collaborated," I replied quickly, stiffening.

Sir Malcolm seemed to sense that I was growing annoyed with him, and that I was quite defensive about my working relationship with the late Sherlock Holmes. "What I need from you, Miss Westenra, isn't something that Sherlock Holmes or the Nortons or even Mycroft Holmes can provide. It is said that you are proficient in location and binding spells."

"And who told you that?" I asked him.

"Inspector Dupin was most forthcoming when I wrote to him. He was, of course, very sympathetic regarding the case of my missing daughter and her husband. You see, he advised me of how you and Mrs. Norton helped to apprehend the culprit behind the Rue Morgue murders. A very sordid case, indeed. Tell me, Miss Westenra: After what you have seen at the sides of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Norton, do you still carry a fascination for all that is dark and sordid?"

"Such a question, Sir Malcolm!" I said. But really, it was one I could readily answer with a _yes._ For my fascination with the dark and sordid is not of one who exults at the cruelty of one man to another, but of one who deplores it and wishes to seek out the ill and cure it. And to cure the ill, sometimes, is to bind it so that it might not pass on and harm others.

"But what is your answer to the question?" he persisted, his dark eyes glittering.

"Yes," I replied almost immediately. "Yes, I still harbor a fascination for such things…"

"Then you will join me in this venture, Miss Westenra?"

And I could not help but agree to it, as I had resigned myself to it since Sir Malcolm had retained Irene and Godfrey Norton's assistance in finding his son-in-law. Yet as Sir Malcolm warned me, this journey was not for the weak or faint of heart. I pledged my services and skills to him, for who could not for such a man in such a situation? He promised to pay me handsomely, and delivered five hundred pound notes to begin, along with an offer to cover the expenses for whatever ingredients I needed. "Name them, and forward them to Mycroft Holmes. My man will come for the list and bring you whatever is needed," Sir Malcolm said. "And if you can, Miss Westenra, find whatever notes Sherlock Holmes has on my case."

* * *

_October 5, 1891.  
_  
I have found the notes Sherlock Holmes left regarding his search for the missing Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray Harker.

He had suspected foul play…and not on the part of either spouse.

An unnamed person…no, an entity.

His notes are sketchy after that. Perhaps he could not believe it.

But then once, he had not believed in witchcraft, either.

How we all change!


End file.
